Eleven comments

Not a mazurka

OK, you’ll probably realise that this isn’t a mazurka but a very popular John McCusker tune.

I’ve transcribed it roughly as I play it without having checked the music (which you’re not supposed to do anyway, of course :-) ) so it won’t be entirely accurate. However, it’s a very close and playable version. If you want to listen to John’s recording of the tune on the Yellow Hoose or the Battlefield album "Rain, Hail, or Shine", you’ll soon get the feel of how it should sound.

Hi Bill,
I agree that it’s a lot easier to to learn by ear. It’s one of the hardest ones I’ve tried to transcribe. I’ll check out yours and if I can manage a "wee sneak" at the actual music sometime(It’s in his book), I’ll update my ABC accordingly.

ABC Amended

Wee Michael’s March

As Johnny Jay, Donough and Bill have all said, it is difficult to transcribe, and (without looking at the music), here’s the reason, I think: the basic time sig is 3/4 (not 4/4), BUT in the second half of the tune there are several 2/4 bars. As Donough says, you just feel the rhythm, but when you start to count it out or analyse it……! And I think that’s what gives this tune its real stand-out quality.
My interpretation is that from the first bar of line 4 in the dots score it goes 3/4, 3/4, 2/4, 3/4, then the same again twice more before going back to a regular 3/4 for the last few bars.
Unfortunately my simple scoring program won’t allow that sort of messing about in the middle of a score!

1st tune…

Setting #3 is my attempt at transcribing the tune from John McCusker’s playing in the above clip. Unfortunately, the embedded abc converter sems not to allow time signature changes within the tune - bar 4 of the B-part is intentionally a beat short and should really have a ‘2/4’ at the beginning (reverting to 3/4 for the following bar).